Legal Identity and Housing, Land and Property Rights of Syrian Refugees from a Durable Solutions Perspective Challenges and Opportunities Recommendations on legal identity and civil documentation 5. Permit all legal actors – national and international – to provide legal services in Syria, to ensure that the legal aid system will be commensurate with the needs on the ground, including those of returnees. The Government of Syria and host country governments should continue to broaden efforts to actively facilitate and ease access to civil documentation. They should: 6. Expand access to documentation by allowing Syrians abroad to issue and update family booklets and issue national identity cards at diplomatic missions in host countries, building upon the expansion of services. 1. Waive or reduce fees associated with the registration of vital events to ensure that the financial implications of registration do not pose an undue burden and barrier for displaced Syrians to obtain civil documentation. Fines related to delayed registration of vital events should be waived or suspended, and the requirements to initiate lawsuits for late marriage, birth and death registration should be removed. In cases where exceptions (e.g. amnesties) are put in place, they should be valid for a minimum of 24 months.135 Governments should issue accurate and timely information regarding the introduction of new policies, and ensure the information is accessible. Humanitarian & Development actors should: 7. Adopt a durable solutions lens to programming and scale up legal assistance services to increase the protection environment on legal identity issues. Programming should be sensitive to the specific needs and vulnerabilities of women, children and undocumented and stateless individuals, and address key civil documentation issues, including those related to death registration, missing persons and fraudulent documents. Donors should: 2. Simplify procedures and evidentiary requirements for civil documentation, especially in complex cases such as death registration and those in which family members are missing or where proof of events is not easily available (e.g., by accepting a minimum burden of proof in terms of documentation or witness evidence in support of the occurrence of vital events). 8. Continue to fund legal assistance programmes that increase the protection environment and in preparation of refugees’ access to durable solutions. This would include addressing key existing and emerging issues related to civil documentation identified through research and data, including those related to death registration, missing persons and fraudulent documents. 3. Facilitate the correction of incorrect information on civil documents (such as place or date of birth) and allow persons to obtain a correctly issued document to replace wrongly issued or fraudulently issued documents without fear of penalty. 9. Commit financial and technical support to strengthen Syria’s Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) system, as well as host country governments’ judiciary and public administration to ensure that procedures for registration of vital events and issuance of documents are quick and accessible, especially in complicated cases such as death registration and those in which family members are missing or where proof of events is not easily available. In addition, the Government of Syria should: 4. Consider more accessible means for improving access to legal and civil documentation, such as strengthening e-service portal services to allow online applications (for replacement and first-time documents) and the establishment of mobile registration units to allow people with limited freedom of movement or those unable to use e-services to register. This would build upon the concept of the Single Syrian Registry, which is the foundation of the new Syrian Civil Status Law.136 Any platform should meet data protection standards and establish a sufficiently secure means to verify identity and, allow Syrians to collect documents from easily accessible locations. 10. Advocate for expanding the number of actors allowed to provide legal aid in Syria and strengthen support to legal service providers in Syria - recognising that a plurality of specialised legal assistance providers would result in increased capacity to address legal needs of displaced populations. 135 136 For example, Syrian Legislative decree No. 7 of 2021 exempted Syrian citizens and persons of equivalent status from fines imposed by the CSL 2021 for delays in registering vital events or obtaining ID cards beyond the legal time limits. This exemption was in place in Syria and at Syrian embassies for only six months from mid-April 2021. Syrian Civil Status Law, Law no. 13/2021, art. 1. Article 1 defines the Single Syrian Registry as: “The database which contains all the data of the State’s citizens, where all events of citizens are recorded wherever they may occur, where a citizen would be represented by a single reference number known as the citizen’s National Number, and where events of non-Syrians which occur on the territories of the State are also recorded.” 22